


Fools of us all

by elyndys



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 02:25:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7826596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elyndys/pseuds/elyndys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Success can come in many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fools of us all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theangelofdarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theangelofdarkness/gifts).



Just five hundred more words, Rob tells himself. Even four hundred and fifty. Come on. It won’t take long, you can knock it off in half an hour if you try. Then you can be done for the day, done for the weekend, go meet Felipe, forget all about working for a couple of days, because he’ll have far more interesting things on his mind. 

That’s the problem though, and that’s why these five hundred words won’t come, because even when Felipe’s not with him, he’s on his mind, and he really can’t help himself. With three months to go until his thesis deadline, he really has picked the worst possible time to fall in love. Three years without a boyfriend, and his final year is when Felipe decides to breeze into his life and turn it on its head. 

He can’t blame Felipe, though, not entirely. Rob should’ve been firmer in his convictions when he said things like ‘I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now’ (true), ‘I can’t afford any distractions this year’ (also true), ‘You’re a bit young for me’ (sensible and probably true, but his heart wasn’t really in this one). But he kept bumping into Felipe at the gym, or around the campus, and especially at the LGBT society socials which he really shouldn’t have time to go to anymore, but he told himself it was good to go and show support for the younger guys, if nothing else. Younger guys like Felipe, who really didn’t seem to need much support at all, because he seemed very confident when he was chatting and flirting with Rob, and asking him out with the sweetest and most charming of smiles. Rob did try to turn him down with those well-intended excuses, but he was fooling no-one. Felipe knew as well as Rob did just how attracted they were to each other, and Rob couldn’t really deny it, when he kept turning up to the socials barely even trying to pretend he wasn’t there almost exclusively to see Felipe. It hadn’t been too long before Rob’s resolve had crumbled under the earnest gaze of those big dark eyes, and meeting at the socials had become meeting up for lunch or at the pub, just the two of them, which had in turn very quickly led to heading back to Rob’s (always Rob’s, after the one time Felipe had taken them back to his place, only for them to be disturbed at the most inopportune time by drunken yelling, singing, and worse, from Felipe’s flatmates. There are a lot of things Rob misses about undergraduate life, but that’s not among them). 

It’s all snowballed pretty quickly, but, as Rob rather bashfully tells his friends who tease him for being so soppy, even after years of teasing him for being single, they ‘just clicked’. He feels stupidly in love, still giddy and excited and looking forward to seeing Felipe all the time they’re apart. Which is why these five hundred words just aren’t coming. He writes a sentence, but it’s pretty poor, so he deletes it and goes back to staring at the document, trying to think, trying to focus, but when he tries to concentrate and quiet his mind, Felipe just sneaks back in there, and thinking about Felipe is so much easier and more pleasant than thinking about his thesis. 

His phone buzzes on the desk, and he picks it up eagerly. He’s not disappointed: the message is from Felipe.

_‘I’m finished with work! Where are you?’_

_‘Still at the library, but I’m just about done,’_ he sends back. It’s mostly true - after all, five hundred words isn’t that much, so it doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t complete it, right? It’s not like he was getting anywhere anyway. And he doesn’t want Felipe to feel guilty for tearing him away from his studies - he definitely doesn’t want to tell Felipe he can’t see him tonight, so he just won’t mention that he hasn’t hit his target. _‘You want to come and meet me here?’_

_‘Yes! :) :) :) <3 <3 <3’_

Rob smiles, and starts to pack up his stuff. He has to wait a few minutes for Felipe outside the library, but when he sees him, he can’t help the stupid flutter his heart does, or the grin that spreads across his face. Felipe is smiling too, and he hugs Rob tighter and for longer than could pass for just a friendly Latin greeting, but Rob doesn’t give a fuck. Around the uni campus it’s fine anyway, no-one really notices, but Rob would happily snog Felipe in front of the town hall at midday on a Saturday, he’s just so happy to be with him and he wants everyone to know. 

“So, what we doing then?” Rob asks, just in case Felipe has plans outside of Rob’s bedroom. 

“I don’t know,” Felipe says, looking at Rob with a coy smile. “You want to watch a movie, or go to the pub?”

“My housemates are both gone for the weekend,” Rob murmurs, satisfied that Felipe doesn’t have anything else he really wants to do.

Felipe’s eyes widen, as does his smile, as he tries to remain appropriately casual for a public setting. “And I don’t have to work until Monday,” he murmurs back. 

Rob feels his heart rate quicken. “Alright then,” he says. “Shall we go?”

Felipe nods, and giggles just a little as they set off up the hill towards Rob’s house. They stop at the Co-op for a bottle of wine, and a pizza they can just put in the oven so they don’t have to break off or be disturbed. Rob isn’t thinking any more about the five hundred words he didn’t write, not when Felipe kisses him as soon as the front door is closed, taking his hand and pulling him up the stairs into his own bedroom, wasting no time in throwing off his clothes and helping Rob out of his with the same enthusiasm. They don’t even bother closing the curtains before they tumble into Rob’s bed, hungry kisses and hot, eager hands all over each other’s skin. Rob hasn’t been with a 21 year old since he was 21, and he didn’t realise how much his body has changed since he was that age - Felipe is ready for anything, at all hours of the day or night, and although Rob might find it tiring sometimes, it’s enormously fun. He wasn’t prepared for how much Felipe takes his breath away with every touch of his lips, the way he moves his body, the way he responds to everything Rob does to him. It takes Rob next to no effort to get him hard, or make him come for that matter, and it's enormously flattering and so exciting that Rob is never far behind him. Being with Felipe has taken years off him, and he tells him as much when they're done. With their first round, at least.

Felipe giggles. “Well, I have never been with someone with so much experience before,” he says, stroking his hand up Rob’s arm flirtatiously, as if they haven’t just finished fucking five minutes ago. “You do things to me that nobody ever did before.”

Rob’s heart skips and he can feel his face heating. When Felipe says things like that, he almost feels as energetic as Felipe is, ready to go again whenever and wherever. It’s dizzying, and wonderful, and Rob wants to make the most of it while he can. 

“I can’t remember if I tell you before,” Felipe says later, when they’re eating their pizza and drinking their wine, still naked in Rob’s bed. “But in two weeks I am going with my friends on holiday for a week.”

“Oh, alright,” says Rob. “Where you going?”

“Cornwall,” says Felipe. “Camping!”

Rob chuckles. “No expense spared, eh,” he teases. 

Felipe nudges him. “We are poor students, we don’t have so much money like you PhD guys,” he laughs. “I think we will go surfing.”

“This I’ve got to see,” says Rob, raising his eyebrows. 

“You are taking the piss?” Felipe asks, and Rob can’t help grinning - he loves hearing Felipe use proper English slang, and takes pride in teaching him more whenever an opportunity presents itself. 

“Not at all,” he protests. “I absolutely want to see you in a wetsuit.”

Felipe laughs, giving him a kiss. “If you are good, maybe I let you see,” he says, and Rob promises to be very, very good.

“I will miss you,” says Felipe, nuzzling Rob playfully. 

“I’ll miss you too,” Rob says honestly. “At least it’ll give me chance to get my head down and push on with my thesis,” he says, but his heart’s not as much in that.

“How is it going?” asks Felipe tentatively.

Rob shrugs. “Alright,” he says. It’s all he feels he can say. “I dunno. It’s hard going. I’m going to see my supervisor next week, so I’ll see what he says.”

“You can do it,” says Felipe confidently. “You are the most intelligent person I know.”

Rob blushes modestly. “Well, that’s not that hard, I’ve met some of your mates,” he says, to stop himself saying something a lot soppier. 

Felipe bursts into laughter. “To be honest, you are right,” he admits. “But anyway, you can do it, if you want to.”

 _If you want to._ That, thinks Rob, is actually a very good point.

He goes to see his supervisor, torn between wanting to make it seem like everything is under control, and trying to get some advice that will help him.

“I've been struggling quite a bit with writer’s block recently,” he admits.

“Mmm,” his supervisor says vaguely. “It'd be good to have a full draft a month before the deadline, I think that would be a realistic aim. So you've still got plenty of time,” he says with an encouraging smile. 

Who is Rob to argue? If his supervisor thinks it's OK, and has faith in him, then it'll all come together, right?

So he goes back and stares at the computer screen some more. 

Felipe’s friends pick him up from Rob’s house early on the Saturday morning. He’s stayed over at Rob’s several nights this week, making the most of their time together before a whole week apart. It’ll be the longest they haven’t seen each other since before they got together.

“Have fun,” mumbles Rob, still half-asleep.

“I will!” says Felipe brightly, kissing Rob’s cheek. “Good luck with your work.”

“Thanks,” Rob manages faintly, before going back to sleep for another three hours. 

The time fucking _drags_ without Felipe. It’s not just the spontaneous and frequent still-new-relationship sex he misses - it’s the way Felipe would do little things like bring him a coffee from his favourite coffee shop, or send him amusing sports memes to make him smile as he’s working.

‘Working.’ If he thought it’d be easier to get on with it without Felipe around, he thought wrong. He might not be facing the same distractions, but he’s moping and daydreaming and thinking about Felipe - he can’t even help it, he really is smitten. He can’t switch it off, no matter how much he tries to focus. He too quickly gets frustrated with staring at his thesis - the words just aren’t there in his mind and they won’t come, so he finds himself looking up Brazilian recipes that he can cook for Felipe when he gets back. He installs Duolingo on his phone and dedicates far too much time to learning the basics of Portuguese. Because every time he tries to do some work, the enormity of it scares him, and he has to look away. Give it a bit more time, and hope something will form in his brain as it idles. 

He tries going to the library, he tries staying at home. He tries going into his department at uni, but the other, brighter, more productive postgrads stress him out even more. He tries going to cafes, even the park, but wherever he is, there’s something to distract him, even if it’s just staring into space and thinking about Felipe. 

In desperation, still waiting for inspiration and running out of procrastination routes, he calls his parents. 

“I thought I might come up and visit you,” he says spontaneously. Might as well.

“Oh, that’ll be nice!” his mum enthuses. “Will Felipe be coming as well?”

“No, he’s gone on holiday with his mates,” Rob says.

“Oh, I see,” his mum says knowingly. “He’s not there so now you have time for your aged parents!”

Rob chuckles. It’s a little bit true, he supposes.

“What about your work?” his dad asks sternly.

“I thought maybe a change of scenery might be good,” he says, quite pleased with himself for coming up with that on the spot. “When I’ve been to conferences and that I’ve always got loads done.”

“Well, it’ll be lovely to see you anyway,” his mum says. “I’ll get your room made up.”

Rob spends the train journey re-reading everything he’s written in the hope it’ll generate some inspiration, but as soon as he’s finished, it’s time to get off the train, and then he has to at least spend some time with his parents, seeing as he’s gone all the way there. 

“Such a shame Felipe couldn’t come with you,” his mum says wistfully. “How is he? Is he well?”

Rob chuckles. He’s so pleased his parents like Felipe so much - but how could they not? He’s the most charming guy Rob’s ever been out with, by a long way. He’s sure they must be relieved - and probably surprised, too - that he’s found someone so genuinely nice. 

“He’s fine, thanks. Working in a sports shop over summer,” he says. 

“I bet you’re glad he didn’t go back to Brazil for the holidays,” his mum says fondly. 

“I think he was planning to, but he changed his mind,” Rob murmurs, feeling his cheeks turn pink.

His mum coos. “You make sure you look after him,” she instructs. “He’s such a lovely lad.”

Rob can’t resist telling Felipe that when he calls him later on. “She’d rather you’d’ve come up to visit than me,” he says dryly. 

Felipe chuckles. “I am very happy that your parents like me!” he says. “But if you are at their house, maybe is not the right time for me to send you some photos…”

Rob raises his eyebrows, even though Felipe can’t see him, and lowers his voice. “It’s always the right time for wetsuit photos,” he murmurs, his lips curling into a smirk.

Felipe laughs wickedly, and it makes the hairs on the back of Rob’s neck stand on end. “Well, in some of them I am wearing the wetsuit,” he says. “In some… not.”

Rob bites his lip, already feeling the first stirrings of excitement before he’s seen any photos at all. “You better send them over,” he says, keeping his voice quiet and even.

“Now?” Felipe asks playfully. “You don’t want to talk to me any more?” 

“I’m hoping this is a conversation that’ll be more appropriate to have via text,” Rob suggests.

Felipe cackles, and hangs up the phone. 

The photos don’t disappoint. Rob’s very glad they all appear to have been taken by Felipe himself, because it’s very obvious these sort of shots are taken for the benefit of someone else, and Rob doesn’t want all Felipe’s mates seeing him like that and knowing what he - and, more importantly, Rob - is going to do with the pictures. It’s not even like the photos are explicit, but they’re suggestive enough to turn Rob on. At first he feels a bit weird about jacking off with his parents in the room next door, but he quickly remembers it's no different to how he spent his teens, and it all comes back to him.

He spends the rest of the week at his parents’, and it actually does prove to be productive for him - it’s tough, it’s still a struggle, but he does get some work done, it seems OK, and he feels a little better, pleased with his progress. 

So when Felipe gets back, it's OK to let himself have a little reward, right? To take the night off and just spend it in bed together, messing around and having fun and enjoying being together again. It feels like ages since he's had his hands on Felipe's body, noting with delight the smooth tan he's acquired even in just a week in the British outdoors. 

“You had a nice time then?” he asks, reluctant to let Felipe out of his arms. “No near-drowning incidents?”

“No!” giggles Felipe. “It was a lot of fun. Next time we can go together,” he suggests, and it makes Rob smile. “You did some work?” he asks carefully.

“Yeah, actually, I did,” says Rob. “It was good.”

Felipe frowns. “It is better for you if I am not here?” he asks, sounding concerned. “I don’t want to stop you from working.”

“Don't be daft,” Rob says immediately. “You're at work every day anyway, and if I really want to find ways to distract myself, I can do that whether you're here or not,” he admits ruefully. 

“Well, if you are sure,” says Felipe, sounding undeniably relieved. 

The next day he approaches Rob with the naughty glint in his eye that Rob loves to see. “I had an idea,” Felipe says. “How I can help you work.”

“Oh yeah?” says Rob, liking where this is going already.

“When you write one thousand words, I will suck your dick,” Felipe offers, looking very pleased with himself.

Rob immediately feels a jolt of arousal, just hearing him say it. He refrains from pointing out that Felipe has been more than happy to do that with no terms and conditions attached for months, and all while Rob has been trying to write his thesis - but he does say, “Five hundred words.”

Felipe laughs, raising his eyebrows in surprise at Rob's cheek. “Seven hundred and fifty,” he says.

“Six hundred,” Rob barters, trying not to grin. 

Felipe rolls his eyes. “Six hundred and fifty, is my final offer,” he says, and Rob chuckles.

“Deal,” he says, and, almost to his own surprise, bangs out the required wordcount in not much longer than it takes for Felipe to suck him off. Considering how much stress Rob is supposed to be under, it’s no problem at all for him to get hard, not with Felipe around. Felipe calls him a _"Good boy"_ for his achievement and oh, that does it, that does it more than Rob would ever have expected. He closes his eyes, still sitting in his office chair at his desk in his room, and Felipe sinks to his knees and gives him a fine reward for his efforts. 

Unfortunately, it’s a reward he can only really receive once a day - twice, tops - and he has to admit, it does nothing for his mental capacity afterwards: his brain is vacant, like he’s taken a beautiful mellow drug, and it's certainly not capable of coherent composition. All he wants to do is cuddle up with Felipe and gently fall asleep. Not to mention, when he re-reads the six hundred and fifty words he wrote later, they do read like the distracted ramblings of a man with something very different on his mind. 

He ends up deleting most of them. He doesn’t tell Felipe - not just because he’s worried Felipe will think he cheated his way to a blow job, but because he doesn’t want him to think his idea failed and made things worse for Rob, rather than better. 

With each day that passes, and with each word he hesitates over, writes, and then deletes, Rob edges closer to the realisation that actually, maybe he’s not going to get it done after all. The missing chunk of words, of material, of ideas, just isn’t coming to him and he doesn’t know where to find it. He’s stalled, stuck between somewhere and nowhere. He has something, but it’s not enough, and he can’t find the bridge to get to where he needs to be.

He emails his supervisor, again trying to strike an appropriate balance between gracefully asking for guidance, and making sure his concerns are taken seriously. _'I think I might need a bit more time,'_ he tries tentatively, hoping he’ll at least get some information on whether that’s possible, and if so, how. He doesn’t get a reply - not even an out-of-office bounce back. 

For the first time, he really feels completely lost. Every time he’s thought about it before he’s looked away, kept hoping for something to appear in his brain and save him, crystallise like one of those Magic Eye pictures from when he was a kid. Rob remembers he could never do those either. And then his last resort, his supervisor, the one person he thought he’d be able to rely on if it came to it, is MIA. 

On the other hand, at least he has someone beside him every day who is happy to support him emotionally. Felipe might be young, he might not have the same experience Rob does, but at least he gives a shit about Rob, he listens to him and responds. 

“He is pointless!” exclaims Felipe when Rob tells him his supervisor has seemingly disappeared. “But if there is anybody who can do it alone, you can,” he goes on loyally, and Rob doesn’t know whether he really has that much faith in him, or he’s just geeing him up, but he appreciates it either way. 

Even so, he has to admit that, in all likelihood, he can’t. “If I could, I would’ve done it by now,” he sighs. “I’ve had enough time.”

Felipe bites his lip, like he’s working up to saying something difficult, and Rob’s stomach flips unpleasantly as he waits to hear it.

“How much do you care?” Felipe says, his words deliberate but delivered with caution, like he’s afraid Rob will flip out on him and he’s started their first proper fight. "I mean... obviously you are not enjoying."

But Rob’s not angry, not remotely - in fact, he's relieved. It slots perfectly into place in his mind, right next to the _’If you want to’_ remark Felipe made before. “Not that much,” he confesses, and it feels kind of freeing.

“It is because of me?” Felipe asks timidly. “Maybe you care less about your PhD because you start to care more about me.”

Rob knows, after not too much contemplation, that that’s not true. If he really cared, he would’ve done the work. He would’ve found a way, Felipe or no Felipe - having a new boyfriend who he’s completely infatuated with is just a convenient excuse for not doing something he didn’t really want to do anyway. He doesn’t need the PhD, he doesn’t even really _want_ the PhD, and he definitely doesn’t like it, not anymore. It's not Felipe's fault - it's just taken Felipe to point out to him what he didn't really want to see for himself. For a moment it occurs to him that, if he doesn’t successfully complete it, he’s wasted quite a lot of time on it - but then a sentimental upstart part of his brain reminds him that, if he hadn’t started it, he’d never have met Felipe. And he wouldn’t even have the PhD either. 

“Felipe, I’d rather have you than a PhD,” he says. It’s the truth, but that doesn’t stop him turning red with embarrassment at his own corniness as he hears himself say it. It might not be what he tells his parents, when he tries to explain all this to them - but who knows, they’re so keen on Felipe, maybe they’ll understand.

To Rob’s relief, Felipe starts to laugh. “Maybe you are not as intelligent as I thought!” he says, even as he puts his arms around Rob and hugs him tight. 

“Probably not,” Rob says, but he doesn’t believe it, not really, not right now, with Felipe in his arms and kissing his lips - in this much at least, he feels like he’s made the smartest decision in the world.


End file.
